Can you help me answer the question below? thanks Question: Imagine that you are
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Question
Can you help me answer the question below? thanks
Question: Imagine that you are an editor who wants to publish an edited book titled “Globalization and Crime”. You want to put together several academic articles written by different experts on various subjects such as Human trafficking, Drug trafficking, Money laundering,Cybercrime etc. And imagine that two of the articles you read for this lecture ("Cybercrime,” by Richard Lovely AND “Preface: my beautiful launderette,” by Lilley) were submitted to you for consideration to be included in the book. What would be the two weaknesses or shortcomings you would find in each of these articles that would make them inadequate to satisfactorily discuss the relationship between globalization and cybercrime, and globalization and money laundering, respectively? In what ways, do you think, the authors of these two articles are failing to explain how different dimensions of globalization are linked to cybercrime and to money laundering?
Here is a link for article by Lilley (just "Preface my beautiful Launderette" this part of reading): https://www.slideshare.net/rizwanamin/dirty-dealing-43454839
Here is a article for Cybercrime by Richard:
The Nature of Cybercrime
Anyone can commit a crime by using the Internet for such offenses as cyberstalking, auction fraud, dating Web site scams, or child pornography. But cybercrime is often seen as the special province of ‘hackers’ who create and use clever programs to gain illegal access to software, computers, and networks whenever a new technology emerges. In the 1980s the exploits of hackers were mostly a costly nuisance and hackers were even viewed sympathetically by some (Chiesa, Ducci, & Ciappi, 2008; Duff & Gardiner, 1996). An underground subculture of hackers emerged that treated penetrating computers and networks as sport. Successful hacking techniques were packaged into easy to use programs or scripts. This greatly increased the pool of offenders and the costs of time and money to clean up their mischief. The stakes rose when commerce moved to the Internet and hacking took on financial motivations (Grabosky, 2001).
From the earliest days of the Internet, a shadowy vice industry has provided the usual fare: sex, pornography, illicit drugs, and gambling. In some countries doing and offering such things online is a crime, but in others it is not. Likewise, in some countries it is legal for Web sites to use advanced file sharing technology to create virtual flea markets or swap meets that make 156 Lovely it easy for ordinary Web users to find and exchange digital contraband. The industries who produce software, music, and movies call this stealing, as do the laws of most countries, but there is overt cultural and legal ambivalence about handcuffing people for taking advantage of state-of-the-art and easily available technology. As well, some Web sites show how to collect and use the products of hackers, such as how to harvest e-mail addresses and send out spam, a practice that cybercrime treaties compel countries to make illegal. When one country outlaws one practice or another, the Web sites move to another where it is legal. Some countries, such as Russia, are suspected of recognizing the economic benefits of offering safe harbor to Web sites that are illegal elsewhere.
The enormous amount of junk e-mail or “spam” sent every day has become a burden on the networks that make up the Internet. Spam, however, is not just a nuisance but also a tool to attract victims. While some spammers may be after a retail sale from a user who opens an e-mail, the goal actually may be covert access to the user’s computer in order to install malicious software or “malware.” These programs may be able to perform various nefarious tasks such as stealing passwords, logging keystrokes, snooping around files, or ID-theft. As spam filters made it less effective to lure victims through e-mail, the search for victims went elsewhere, such as using social networking sites like MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter. A Facebook user is sent a fake message from a “friend” that invites her to watch a video, which will lead to installing a virus or worm on her computer. Cybercrime depends as much on “social engineering” or the manipulation of users as technically defeating software and hardware.
The most insidious use of malware is to hook a personal computer into a “botnet,” a remotely controlled network that can link many, even millions, of computers together to work on a common task. These botnets were intended for useful projects but cybercriminals quickly recognized the profit potential in using other people’s computers to run their own networks without cost or the knowledge of the computer users. Illegal botnets are used to broadcast spam, distribute malware, and carry out attacks on given Web sites by sending so many requests for service that host servers crash. Ironically, a user whose computer works as part of a botnet may never know it or experience any harm.
Perhaps the most sophisticated cyber offenses are automated attacks on Internet banking. Malware slipped into a computer can detect and transmit a user’s personal banking information in order to facilitate raiding of the user’s bank account. Standard encryption safeguards are bypassed because the program is on the user’s computer. These programs can even be smart Cybercrime 157 enough to limit the amount withdrawn so as to delay triggering notice as long as possible. The withdrawn funds are sent to the accounts of “mules” who then transfer the money to the cybercrime enterprise running the botnet. The amazing thing about these automated schemes is an offender can be on any continent and never know or care from whom or where the money that appears in his or her own account came.
The Extent of Cybercrime
Cybercrimes are not listed separately in official crime reports but are included in relevant offense categories. However, there are various special independent efforts by government agencies and corporations to keep track of cybercrime. In the U.S., the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) receives complaints from citizens but they represent only a fraction of all cybercrimes. Computer security firms constantly monitor the Internet to keep track of botnets, viruses, worms, and denial-of-service attacks on Web sites. The numbers from these various reports are more useful to assess trends than actual rates of cybercrime. Everywhere, indications are that cybercrime is growing apace with the growth of the Internet throughout the world.
Business interest groups for producers of movies, software, and music also attempt to measure the extent to which their industries are victimized worldwide from stolen or “pirated” intellectual property. The Business Software Alliance found that 41 percent of all commercial software used in the world in 2007 is pirated with rates reaching 95 percent in Georgia and 80 percent in China. The Motion Picture Association estimates that in 2005 losses from movie piracy by movie studios were $6.1 billion dollars with 40 percent of that due to Internet downloads. Movie piracy rates in China were estimated at 90 percent and 79 percent in Russia. An eight nation survey in 2004 suggested a quarter of all Internet users had downloaded movies without paying for them and 70 percent of respondents said they did not think movie piracy was a problem, which suggests digital piracy will continue.
Other businesses suffer great losses and inefficiency due to penetrations of their computer systems. Despite laws to require safeguards, there are frequent incidents of thefts of databases containing sensitive trade information or customer or client data, sometimes putting millions of people at risk of ID-theft. Regular findings from an annual FBI cybercrime survey show the most expensive security incidents suffered by corporations are from financial fraud and dealing with computers controlled by “bots” (automated malicious software). About half of corporations report they are 158 Lovely hit by a computer virus in a given year. But the survey shows that insiders are almost as great a threat as cyber attacks from outside the firm. This is a particularly difficult problem for organizations and suggests how difficult cybercrime is to prevent.
Fraud has become a persistent problem of online commerce because of the remote link between the seller and buyer. Many Internet businesses provide no physical address on their Web site. As successful Internet-based business models, such as eBay, have become global, so has the potential to exploit them with untoward intentions. It turns out that much of the merchandise and software sold through eBay is counterfeit. In France, eBay was held liable for hosting these crimes but the U.S. courts held it was not, that the offense lies with the seller of the counterfeit goods and not the Internet host.
Botnets are considered threatening enough to have been on the agenda of leaders of the world at the 2007 World Economic Forum in Davos. Some estimates are that a quarter of all computers that connect to the Internet are part of a botnet, about 250 million computers in 2009. The scale of things to come is boggling. With the breathtaking pace of technological change, the implications of adding another billion more Internet users, just from China and India, on the future of global cybercrime cannot be known.
The Causes of Cybercrime
Criminologists have been challenged to provide explanations of the phenomenon of cybercrime. The most convincing explanation for early hacking behavior may be to look to the behavior itself to appreciate its seductive, even addictive, appeal to youthful offenders (Taylor, 1999). While there are still cyber offenders who fit that model, it is clear that much cybercrime has become financially motivated.
Psychological models have promise for understanding individual cyber offenders, especially pedophiles or those whose behavior reflects addiction. But while social, economic, and personal background factors may affect cybercrime rates just as they do general crime rates, it may be that the very nature of the Internet, namely such characteristics as the sense of anonymity, speed, stealth, safety, and access to unlimited numbers of potential victims or mischief, makes it hard for offenders to resist the temptations of cybercrime (Newman & Clarke, 2003).
At the social level, given the virtual nature of cyber communities, theories that focus on how normative structures affect deviance are fertile explanations of some types of cybercrime. For example, digital piracy rates Cybercrime 159 around the world follow patterns consistent with sociological strain theory as economic globalization has set the stage for predictable widespread pirating of intellectual property. The rub with strain theory is it does not explain the widespread digital piracy within wealthier countries. This behavior is more consistent with the notion that without adequate safeguards people will take advantage of potential illicit gains.
The most ambitious international project to study hackers and their motivations has been the Hackers Profiling Project, a project of the United Nations Interregional Crime and Justice Research Institute, a long-term study that attempts to apply criminal profiling techniques to understanding hacking (Chiesa, Ducci, & Ciappi, 2008). The project has an interesting bias, which is to challenge some of the stereotypes about hackers and to suggest there will be no success in controlling cybercrime unless we understand them.
The Control of Cybercrime
Although law enforcement agencies handle cybercrimes when probes are necessary, there is a limit to how successful formal social control of cybercrime can be. Effective social control begins with the establishment and enforcement of norms in an informal community context. That traditional social context is lacking in cyberspace. Into this vacuum have stepped various citizen groups that maintain Web sites to combat what they see as undesirable behavior on the Web, such as hate speech or child pornography. These groups may be based anywhere in the world and recruit members worldwide. Some of these civilian groups maintain Web sites to publicize the extent of the problem and to allow reporting of offenses. Other groups have attempted to use “hactivist” techniques to disable child porn or hate sites by using hacking tactics to disrupt the activities of sites to which they object. Of course, in countries that protect freedom of speech these activities themselves may be cybercrimes. Some countries like China are trying to impose online order by controlling access to Web sites and with government mandated filtering software but the controllers’ tactics always seem to lag behind the technology and cleverness of users.
Likewise, the recording and software industries have largely taken enforcement of the law into their own hands by suing companies that facilitate file sharing and individual Internet users who illegally download large numbers of files. The first lawsuits were issued by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in the United States and targeted consumers. In Europe, the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry 160 Lovely (IFPI) has also begun to use lawsuits as a deterrent. These efforts have yielded mixed results and strong opposition. The serious threat of cybercrime to international finance and business has sparked numerous international efforts to study the problem and develop policies, laws, and organizations to respond to the problem but the differences across countries are highly problematic (Koops & Brenner, 2006).
Law enforcement agencies are struggling to gain the technological wherewithal to combat cybercrime. It is becoming common to have specialized police and prosecution units that deal with cybercrime. In India there is even a cybercrime police station in Bangalore. In Europe, Europol, the European Police Office located in The Hague, has created a high tech crime center, and the FBI has created regional digital forensics labs throughout the United States. The transnational nature of cybercrime has prompted more than thirty countries to cooperate in providing immediate response assistance in the investigation of a cybercrime that reaches across borders.
Explanation / Answer
Richard Lovely’s article “ Cybercrime,” delves into the nature of cybercrimes and the magnitude of the problem posed by hacking at a transnational level in the present era. While, he develops a good descriptive view of the problems and he threats posed internet crimes, the work is in want of some analytical explanations when it comes to understanding the rate of cybercrimes in the context of globalisation. For one, the article falls short of the expectation about a causal framework. Instead of looking into a historical trajectory of the cause of cybercrimes from the country of its origin and then tracing its political network along the global cyberspace, it cuts the argument short and attempts to instead excavate personal or psychological motives behind committting the crime. From the point of view of global politics, cybercrimes would evidently be much more than the mere seduction experienced by individual cyber users and hackers and instead involve larger virtual communities. A second limitation of the article can be seen its silence about the politics of domination over the Internet namely, which countries and societies have a greater stake in both the circulation of malware and internet thefts as well as its control. A post-structuralist view of cybercrimes would make one wary of the maliciousness of cybercrimes and it would appear that conscientious hacking or hactivism is seen as a deterrent to developmental projects of many corporate sectors in the developed societies and countries in positions of power in the world would yield a greater stake in creating hactivism as a threat in the global image. However, the article does not throw any light on this trend of the developed societies and it thus remains an apolitical reading of globalisation and cybercrimes.
The next article for review is “Preface: My Beautiful Launderette” by Lilley which is based on a contemporary analysis of money laundering. While the work can be said to be commendable for presenting a caricature of the real human beings involved in the process of a global crime, it leaves the reader half satisfied when it comes to addressing the relationship between globalisation and money laundering. There are two apparently shortcomings of the summary of the book. Firstly, while it traces the plausible network of investments made by criminals across different countries, it does not show how the specific route may be earmarked within the politics of power relations between different countries. Thus for instance, drug trafficking in South America could be more commonly linked to sex trafficking and child labour in Eastern Europe and Africa but not Asia. There seems to be an orchestrated route involved in money laundering which may throw light on the proliferation of money laundering’s within the context of globalisation. ‘Dirty Dealing’ however appears to remain aloof from this politics. Secondly, The studies taken appear to be too Western centric and give a dominant discourse of the problem of money laundering in the developed societies. But from the point of view of a study of a global plague, it does not appear to engage with the evil of corruption and money laundering in the Third World.
Thus, in conclusions, both these works can be appreciated for the uniqueness of the ideas of presenting the two global issues of cybercrime and mone6 laundering respectively. However, a more in-depth review of the particular nuances in the process of globalisation remains to be answered in both these texts.